SUZANNE TENNERDavid Oyelowo as Muddy Waters and Alessandro Nivola as Leonard Chess in “Who Do You Love,” the story of Chess Records.
It’s a good Hollywood rule that if two projects are racing to the box office with the same idea, the second one always suffers.

After all, over the years, we’ve seen races between two “Dangerous Liaisons” adaptations, two Truman Capote biographies, two Robin Hood movies, even two erupting-volcano disaster pictures — and in each case, the first was better.

Who Do You Love (Unrated) International Film Circuit (91 min.) Directed by Jerry Zaks. With Alessandro Nivola, Chi McBride, Megalyn Echikunwoke. Now playing exclusively at the Village East in New York.

Stephen Whitty's review: TWO STARS

Actually, in the case of the volcano movies, both pictures — “Dante’s Peak” and the imaginatively titled “Volcano” — were still pretty awful. But you get the point.

Unfortunately, the makers of “Who Do You Love” didn’t.

Produced as a competing, authorized version of the story already told in “Cadillac Records” — but only reaching theaters now — “Who Do You Love” is about Chicago’s blues powerhouse, Chess Records.

Unfortunately, in this movie they’re once again all working for Leonard Chess, and on his terms. They show up, clown around and play some songs. But the story the film wants to tell remains centered on their employer. And, frankly, he’s not that interesting.

“Cadillac Records” did somewhat the same thing, but at least it showed a bit of the artists’ personal lives. This movie cares only about Chess. That makes sense in a way (his family members were consultants), but it’s like making F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway supporting players in the exciting Charles Scribner story.

It doesn’t help, either, that Alessandro Nivola is so utterly lacking in charisma as the record mogul, a man who seems to have no identifiable characteristics beyond a dirty mouth. Or that the whole of his dramatic conflict comes down to that he works really, really hard to provide for his family.

Nor is it good that the script is such an obvious “Official” history, emphasizing the artists whose estates cooperated and ignoring everyone else. The great Chuck Berry doesn’t even appear. And Etta James — played beautifully by Beyoncé in the earlier film — gets rewritten and fictionalized as “Ivy Mills.”

Megalyn Echikunwoke is good in the part, and the dependable Chi McBride has a few amusing elements as Willie Dixon. And the music is, of course, tremendous (although it’s unclear why director Jerry Zaks had Keb’ Mo’ dub David Oyewolo’s singing as Muddy Waters — if you’re going to dub him, why not dub him with the real recordings?)

Then again, if you’re really interested in Chess Records, why go to this film at all when you could be at home actually listening to Chess records?